Rancher's Double Dilemma

by Pamela Browning

  Garth skewered Lacey with a look. He spoke loudly in order to be heard over the sound of Ashley’s sobbing. “If you didn’t know the babies were exactly alike when you came here, when did you find out?”

  “I thought Michele’s twin had died. I didn’t know until I saw Ashley that she hadn’t.” Lacey drew a deep breath and plunged ahead. “But that’s not what’s important right now. We need to find out what’s wrong with them.”

  Garth narrowed his eyes. She could tell he was having a hard time accepting the truth. “Wait a second, what are you saying?”

  “I had two babies. I was told that one died shortly after she was born, and I believed it.” Her gaze locked with his.

  As realization dawned, Garth looked thunderstruck. Then his face, tanned from many hours in the sun, suddenly blanched, and the anger seemed to drain out of him all at once. “Oh, my God.” He stared at Lacey as though he had never seen her before.

  “I was in the Sweiger County Hospital the same night as Joan,” Lacey said quietly.

  “You can’t be saying what I think you are,” Garth said, summarily dismissing what he clearly thought was an impossibility.

  “Couldn’t I?”

  Garth felt as though he’d been hit in the head with a tenton load of bricks. The babies’ crying had scraped his nerves raw, and now this. He made himself focus, made himself think. “I can’t deal with this now, with my daughter sick. I’m calling Donna Faber. She’s Ashley’s pediatrician.” Much to his relief, Ashley stopped crying, but she whined softly as he headed for his office to look up the pediatrician’s phone number. He knew he should know it by heart, but he was so flabbergasted, so unhinged by the sight of these two look-alike babies, Michele so like Ashley, Ashley so like Michele, that he couldn’t think straight.

  While he made the phone call, Lacey sat down on a kitchen chair and rubbed the back of Michele’s neck. The baby seemed soothed by this ministration, but she didn’t stop whimpering entirely. “I should be crying right along with you,” Lacey whispered to her daughter. “But I can’t. I’d better keep my wits about me, hadn’t I?”

  “Donna will be right over,” Garth said after he hung up and returned to the kitchen. He turned his back on Lacey, but she could see Ashley peering over his shoulder.

  He hadn’t taken the revelation well, Lacey thought. But then, who would? And with the babies sick and all…well, he couldn’t have found out in any worse way. But now, finally, he was rallying to the emergency. He was soothing Ashley, talking to her in a low tone. You couldn’t ask anything more from a daddy.

  Only Garth wasn’t Ashley’s daddy.

  Michele screwed up her face as if to unleash a fresh spate of hollering, and Lacey thought that maybe Michele would be more comfortable if she opened the neck of her playsuit. Talking to her softly and consolingly, she undid the zipper a couple of inches. It revealed what on closer inspection turned out to be a rash.

  A rash? It hadn’t been there this morning. Lacey tried to think of what a rash meant. Measles? Mumps? Chicken pox? Some exotic disease brought on by southwestern rodents? The rat-at-the-dump episode was still fresh in her mind.

  She almost drew the rash to Garth’s attention, but then the dogs outside began to bark. Headlights swung across the kitchen window, and a car door slammed. In a matter of moments a woman approached the screen door, the dogs dancing around her legs in excitement.

  “It’s Donna,” Garth said.

  Lacey hadn’t even managed to get the words “Come in” out of her mouth before Donna swung the door open and walked right in before she was asked.

  It wasn’t only that Donna barged in without knocking but the way her gaze glommed onto Lacey that Lacey didn’t like. It was like the woman reared back with a “Whoa, Nellie!” when she saw Lacey sitting there.

  Lacey wiped Michele’s runny nose with the edge of her collar. Michele gaped openmouthed at the visitor.

  “Hi, I’m Lacey,” she said, forcing a brightness into her voice that she didn’t feel. Lacey didn’t know much about this person other than what Kim had told her. She knew Donna liked Garth, and Kim had led her to believe that the feeling was mutual. Lacey hadn’t thought much about what kind of woman would appeal to Garth Colquitt, but she hadn’t expected this person with elongated features and hair that resembled dried brown grass clippings. She guessed she’d anticipated somebody rounder and softer like Joan, someone more traditional.

  Ignoring Lacey’s scrutiny, Donna reached for the baby she was holding. “Let’s take a look at you, Ashley,” she said over the baby’s wails.

  “This,” Lacey said calmly and clearly, “is Michele.”

  Donna blinked. “Excuse me?” Michele ignored her and went on crying.

  “This is Ashley,” Garth said. Ashley was snuffling, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.

  Donna looked from one baby to the other, clearly puzzled at the amazing likeness. Two pairs of darker rimmed gray eyes, two fluffs of identical blond hair, two little pointed chins. “But—”

  Neither Lacey nor Garth ventured to speak.

  “Um, these babies—” Donna said, trying again.

  “Are twins,” Lacey said succinctly.

  Garth flushed angrily. “Now wait a minute,” he began.

  Lacey, with Michele in her arms, jumped up, unable to contain herself for one more minute. “Isn’t it obvious? You saw! You see! They’re exactly alike! Ashley’s my baby, the one they told me died!”

  Garth looked as if he had swallowed something that tasted bad, and they glared at each other over the wide expanse of the kitchen table.

  Donna very carefully and deliberately set her bag down on the table and folded her arms across her meager chest. She inhaled a deep breath. “O-o-o-kay,” she said, drawing the word out as long as she could. “What’s obvious to me as a doctor is that both of these kids look sick. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’d better take a look at them, don’t you think? Like you asked me to do?”

  “Of course,” Garth said.

  Lacey nodded.

  “So let’s proceed up to the nursery.” Donna picked up her bag, and Garth went first up the stairs with the two women following. As Lacey passed the picture of Joan Colquitt on her way up, she had the absurd idea that Joan, whose sweet face she had become accustomed to over the past weeks, was glaring at her in indignation. Which was silly. Joan was gone. And Lacey had, she was positive, given birth herself to both of these babies. If anyone was in the wrong here, it was the Colquitts, not her. It wasn’t hard to feel indignant, angry, righteous. She had suffered. She had been hurt. And now she would have to do something about it, which couldn’t help hurting other people in the process.

  In the nursery Donna took Ashley from Garth and laid her on the changing table, where she took her temperature, murmured soothingly and studied the rash for several seconds. After she handed the baby back to Garth, she took Michele from Lacey.

  “Do you have an idea what this is? Is it serious?” Lacey couldn’t help asking as Donna gently palpated Michele’s abdomen.

  “Oh, I know what they’ve got, all right. Chicken pox.” Donna sat Michele up and checked her back for the rash. “See? She’s breaking out in little blisters. These will burst and form scabs, which will become very itchy.”

  “I remember. I had chicken pox when I was about nine or ten,” Lacey said. Her mother had sat her in baking-soda baths for hours at a time to control the itching, and that was basically all she could recall about it.

  “But where could they have contracted chicken pox? I didn’t know either of them had been around other kids,” said Garth.

  “I’ve seen several chicken pox cases in my practice lately,” Donna said. “And these babies are about two months away from getting their chicken pox vaccinations.”

  Lacey thought for a moment. “A day or so after I arrived here, one of the ranch hands’ wives stopped in to pick up his paycheck. She brought their two little boys with her, and they sat and played with the gir
ls while I looked for the check,” she said.

  “That must have been Chuck Hodge’s wife. He said his kids were sick,” Garth told them.

  “The Hodge children are my patients, and they came down with chicken pox a couple of weeks ago,” Donna said. She handed Michele back to Lacey. “You can give them aspirin substitute for discomfort and fever, no aspirin. There’s an ointment that works well, and you should cut their fingernails every day to lessen the chance of secondary infections that might arise from their scratching.”

  Donna went on to enumerate other measures they could take. Garth was paying close attention to Donna’s instructions, but every so often he would send Lacey a look that let her know more than anything that he was furious, terrified, and more than a little worried about the underlying situation, which must be incomprehensible to him.

  And that all went double for her.

  “So,” said Donna, “any questions?”

  “Not for you,” Garth said pointedly.

  “Maybe there should be,” Lacey found the wits to say. “Donna, don’t you have hospital privileges at Sweiger County Hospital? Where Ashley was born?”

  Donna looked from one of them to the other. Garth was holding Ashley, and Lacey was holding Michele.

  “If you’re implying,” she said slowly, “that I had anything to do with this…this unusual circumstance, I can tell you right now that I did not.”

  “Weren’t you Ashley’s pediatrician from the start?”

  “Yes. I was,” Donna said evenly. “I saw her a few hours after she was born.”

  “And what about Michele? Did you see her, too?”

  “No, Lacey. I didn’t. There were two babies in the nursery when I made my rounds early that morning, and only the Colquitt child—Ashley Anne—was my patient.”

  Lacey didn’t speak. She was, for once, at a loss for words. Anyway, how did you speak about the unspeakable?

  Garth spoke next. “There are some things Lacey and I need to discuss, obviously. How about if I call you tomorrow, Donna?” He sounded weary.

  “Sure,” Donna said. Lacey knew from the way the doctor clicked her bag closed that she wasn’t happy about this dismissal.

  “Thank you for coming out here so promptly, Donna,” Lacey said, doing her best to let the doctor know that her presence was appreciated.

  Donna spared her a brief smile. “That’s what I’m for. Let me know how the girls are doing. Call anytime if you need me.” She took her bag and headed out of the room.

  Garth made as if to follow her out, but Donna turned and held up a hand. “No,” she said. “I know my way to the door.” Lacey couldn’t help but notice how her eyes hooked into Garth’s. There was a kind of moony quality to Donna’s gaze, a thinly veiled adoration. Well, Kim had told her that Dr. Faber was—how had she put it?—sweet on Garth.

  They heard the swift retreat of Donna’s footsteps down the stairs and then the closing of the back door as she left. Al and Tipper provided a send-off with a few halfhearted woofs before the Jimmy’s engine started.

  “Well,” Lacey said with more enthusiasm than she felt. “How about if I get the babies into that baking soda bath that Donna recommended while you run into town and pick up a tube of ointment?”

  “I was going to suggest the same thing, only I thought you could go get the ointment,” Garth said, his face impassive.

  She had a sudden idea. “Why don’t you ask Cody to go to the drugstore and bring it home when he comes in?” Cody’s bedroom door across the hall was closed, and Lacey assumed that Cody was visiting Kim in town as he often did in the evening.

  “Cody’s planning to sleep at Kim’s tonight and will be leaving in the morning for a couple of days’ vacation. After our heated exchange this afternoon, I told him to take some time off to check out the job situation in Wichita Falls. No better way for Cody to get that idea out of his system than to take a look and see that the grass on the other side of the fence isn’t where he wants to graze.”

  Even as Garth spoke, Ashley chose that moment to start crying again and held her arms out to Lacey. Garth’s face fell. He clearly didn’t want to hand his daughter over, but the way Ashley was leaning, she nearly fell against Lacey, who was ready for her. Reluctantly, his face flushing, Garth relinquished his hold on her. Ashley buried her face in Lacey’s neck and hiccuped.

  Garth looked as if he was about to bust with unspoken words. Maybe the best thing was to find him something to do.

  “You could run the bath water while I undress them,” she suggested.

  Garth spared her an abrupt nod, went into the bathroom next door and turned on the water in the tub full force.

  Lacey kissed one girl, then the other. “We’ll have you two feeling better in no time,” she told them.

  Privately she wasn’t so sure. Donna had said that chicken pox lasted from ten days to two weeks. She and Garth were in for a long siege, and not under the easiest of circumstances. Especially since Garth had tried to fire her.

  AT LONG LAST the babies were asleep. Lacey felt wired, restless and worried to death about what was going to happen. It seemed as if this whole situation was a bewildering maze that she’d never be able to negotiate.

  While Garth had driven to town to buy the ointment, she’d settled Michele for convenience’s sake into the big crib in Ashley’s room even though Michele usually stayed upstairs in the attic room. Ashley took more soothing, and when she seemed ready to quiet down, Lacey put her into the portable next to the big crib. Lacey intended to sleep in the attic room tonight so that if the babies wakened, she could be with them right away.

  But she didn’t want to go upstairs yet. She wanted a glass of milk and a piece of the blueberry pie she’d made that morning, which seemed like ever so long ago.

  She cut a piece of the pie and carried it out on the back porch, where Al and Tipper stood up and nudged her legs with damp noses until she scratched both of them behind the ears. They performed that dog maneuver where they tiptoed around in circles before bedding down behind the porch rockers, Tipper’s head on Al’s back. They looked sweet, Lacey thought distractedly, and wished she had someone to curl up with like that. She changed her mind right away, though. She was mighty happy to be rid of Bunny, and she hadn’t had any occasion to curl up with anyone else since she’d kicked her ex-husband out. Which was just as well. She wasn’t looking for a husband at this stage in her life. It was enough to be a good mother.

  She sat down on the top porch step and dug her fork into the pie. It was good, the crust nice and flaky.

  “Lacey?”

  Garth let himself out the back door behind her. Her hand carrying the fork stopped halfway to her mouth. She’d known this discussion was inevitable, but she’d better keep reminding herself that it wasn’t her fault that they were in this fix.

  Garth paused at the bottom of the steps. The gaze that he turned on her was steady and held a hint of the anguish she knew he must be feeling.

  “We’re going to have to talk,” he said. “Will it be now or later?” She noticed fine lines around his eyes that she’d never seen before.

  “I sure am exhausted,” Lacey said truthfully. “But I don’t want to wait.” She’d waited long enough, though she didn’t say this.

  Garth sat down beside her on the top step. Insects chirred in the shrubbery, and overhead the silvery white disk of the moon seemed to hang upon a chain of stars. She didn’t dare look at him.

  “They both have gray eyes like yours,” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied. She’d always been told her eyes were very distinctive with that darker gray rim around the pupils, and the girls had it, too. She didn’t know what else to say, whether to let Garth take the lead, how to proceed. In all her imaginings, she hadn’t figured this part out.

  In the moonlight she saw his stark profile outlined against the white clapboard of the house.

  “You want to tell me what you know?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question.


  She was silent for a long time, and finally he angled his head around to look at her and saw that her lower lip was quivering. She, usually so talkative, could not speak.

  “Lacey?” he said, prompting her.

  When finally she set the plate with the pie aside and began, it was in a soft voice. “I was almost nine months pregnant and as big as a house. I knew I was going to have twins, and I was real uncomfortable with the summer heat and all. My husband was supposed to ride in a rodeo in Waco, and he insisted that I come along, and since we were living in the Winnebago, I really had no choice. The night the babies were born, we’d come up on the outskirts of Mosquito, rolling along the highway, when I felt my first pain. Not a twinge, not an ache, but a real honest-to-goodness labor pain. I knew right away that my babies were on the way.”

  Garth tried to imagine it—the long straight highway, the Winnebago eating up the lonely road, the man and woman riding along in the dark when the woman turned to her husband and told him she was in labor.

  “There were these big blue signs with Hs on them as we came into Mosquito. Hospital, we knew they meant. Bunny took a wrong turn and got lost, so he was fit to be tied, and I was concentrating with all my might on not having those babies till there was someone who could take care of us.”

  “Go on,” Garth said.

  “I got to the hospital, it’s a tiny one, and there wasn’t much going on except one other woman in labor. It was like one or two o’clock in the morning. And my babies were coming real fast, and a nurse gave me whiffs of gas before the epidural, which I had in the emergency room because that was where there was someone qualified to do it, so I wasn’t exactly conscious afterward. I know there was a lot of concern about the other woman in labor. Her doctor wasn’t there yet, and there was a nurse who seemed real capable, but she was kind of old and I worried about if she could deal with everything that was going on.”

  “Ruth Acevedo,” Garth supplied. “She’s delivered a lot of babies in her time.” Ruth had worked at the Sweiger County Hospital nearly forever. The night Ashley had been born, Ruth had delivered her, he remembered, because Joan’s obstetrician, Macon Polk, hadn’t made it in time. Macon had been up in San Antonio at his daughter’s wedding that night. Macon’s absence had seemed like the worst possible timing to Garth, and it meant that he’d been expected to place all his trust and confidence in Ruth. He had been uncomfortable about that because it was well-known that Ruth was getting slightly dotty in her old age and had been urged to retire by the hospital’s chief of staff.